e would
have advised her to read it, but certainly in the manner which best
pleased his heart, and answered it again, declaring that all that he
said was no avail. He might be false to her if he would. If through
fickleness of heart and purpose he chose to abandon her, she would
never complain--never at least aloud. But she would not be false to
him; nor were her inclinations such as to make it likely that she
should be fickle, even though her affection might be tried by a delay
of years. Love with her had been too serious to be thrown aside. All
which was rather strong language on the part of a young lady, but was
thought by those other young ladies at Castle Richmond to show the
very essence of becoming young-ladyhood. They pronounced Clara to be
perfect in feeling and in judgment, and Herbert could not find it in
his heart to contradict them.

And of all these doings, writings, and resolves, Clara dutifully told
her mother. Poor Lady Desmond was at her wits' end in the matter.
She could scold her daughter, but she had no other power of doing
anything. Clara had so taken the bit between her teeth that it was
no longer possible to check her with any usual rein. In these days
young ladies are seldom deprived by force of paper, pen, and ink; and
the absolute incarceration of such an offender would be still more
unusual. Another countess would have taken her daughter away, either
to London and a series of balls, or to the South of Italy, or to the
family castle in the North of Scotland; but poor Lady Desmond had not
the power of other countesses. Now that it was put to the trial, she
found that she had no power, even over her own daughter. "Mamma, it
was your own doing," Clara would say; and the countess would feel
that this alluded not only to her daughter's engagement with Herbert
the disinherited, but also to her non-engagement with Owen the heir.

Under these circumstances Lady Desmond sent for her son. The earl was
still at Eton, but was now grown to be almost a man--such a man as
forward Eton boys are at sixteen--tall, and lathy, and handsome, with
soft incipient whiskers, a bold brow and blushing cheeks, with all a
boy's love for frolic still strong within him, but some touch of a
man's pride to check it. In her difficulty Lady Desmond sent for the
young earl, who had now not been home since the previous midsummer,
hoping that his young manhood might have some effect in saving his
sister from the disgrace of a ma